


don't give into what the careless feel

by lostin_space



Series: Whumptober2020❤️️ [4]
Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Caulfield, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Implied/Referenced Torture, Imprisonment, Whumptober 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-05
Updated: 2020-10-05
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:21:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26827297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lostin_space/pseuds/lostin_space
Summary: Alex is working at Caulfield and he breaks one little rule only to learn more than he bargained for.
Relationships: Michael Guerin & Alex Manes
Series: Whumptober2020❤️️ [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1947301
Comments: 6
Kudos: 41
Collections: Roswell New Mexico ▶ Michael Guerin / Alex Manes





	don't give into what the careless feel

**Author's Note:**

> tagged as gen because there's not really any even kind of underlying romance 
> 
> for whumptober day 4: caged
> 
> title: drift by choker
> 
> if i missed any tags, let me know

It was stupid, really.

Alex knew better. He’d always known better. Did that stop him from doing dumb things? Absolutely not. And he wasn’t about to start today.

He hummed casually as he walked through the hall of dark prison cells with impenetrable glass doors, trying to seem like all he was doing was his patrol to make sure they were all sleeping. It was late. The night shift was in full gear and it was Alex’s night to guard the basement. The first night he’d gotten to do it alone. It was what he’d been waiting for since he was twelve years old.

He got to the cell that he’d been drawn to since he was first brought here to view the place with his dad. On the other side of the glass door was a man his age who was kind and intelligent with a head full of curls they only allowed him to keep for a little while until they shaved it for experiments. Alex had managed to arrange things to let him grow it out more because it made him happy.

It’d been over a decade of getting to know him through either a glass door or before he was torture. When they were little, Alex would sit outside his cell and teach him how to do crossword puzzles. Then he’d sit with him and they’d play together, almost forgetting that they had a wall between and couldn’t really communicate outside of Alex talking at him and N-29 nodding or shaking his head or drawing shapes on the glass. He picked up the alphabet and spelling fast. They did that until he started working there himself.

Alex remembered the first time he touched him. It’d been like his skin was set on fire. He wanted to enjoy it, but that wasn’t an option. Alex had to be the one to drag him to the lab on the third floor. He watched as they stripped him, as they strapped him down, as they poked and prodded and tortured him. And then he had to take him back. It wasn’t the way he would’ve liked to have touched him for the first time. He called in sick the next day, hungover on booze and tears and the image of this boy he was attached to in some explainable way being violated in the worst way. After that, he went out of his way not to be near him when it was time.

Tonight, though, was different. Tonight, they were alone. Tonight, they could sit in the dark in his cell and talk for real. They hadn’t gotten to just sit with each other in so long. Maybe next time he could bring a book of crossword puzzles...

Alex looked both ways before he pressed his thumb on the little scanner that cleared him to open the door. He planned to erase the log of that as soon as he was done and before they had a chance to check it. Then he slowly pulled the door open.

Subject N-29 stood up quickly at attention, his eyes wide in absolute terror and not even trying to hide it. Even when he noticed that it was just Alex, he didn’t relax. It hurt his feelings a little bit, but he tried his best not to take it to heart. They hadn’t been able to bond really since Alex joined the Air Force. Alex hadn’t gotten to do much other than hope his eyes spoke for themselves.

“Hi,” Alex whispered, “I just... I wanted to say hi. Like, in person. Without all the stuff.”

“Without all the stuff?” N-29 repeated. Alex smiled. It was the first time he heard his voice and it was gorgeous. He wished he could’ve heard it when they were little, wished he could’ve heard him grow as much as he’d seen him.

“Like, my dad and stuff. The, the mean stuff,” Alex said. N-29 nodded slowly, still keeping himself as far away as Alex as he could. “I’m not gonna hurt you, I promise.”

“I see,” he said.

This wasn’t exactly how Alex expected it to go.

Maybe it was naive to think that they were just going to mesh entirely, that N-29 would immediately just see Alex how Alex saw him. As equals, right? But they weren’t, not really. Alex had been put in a position of power over him and, whether he liked it or not, he still had a hand in, well, _everything._ Alex would just have to earn his trust.

“So, uh, do you have a name? I sort of hate calling you N-29, it’s... dehumanizing.”

“Dehumanizing?” he repeated, clearly trying to figure out the meaning of the word with context clues, “I am not human.”

“Yeah, I know, it’s more like...” Alex trailed off, “Like, uh, it’s, like, not right. Like, it means treating someone like they aren’t as good as you. And I think you’re as good as me. So I could call you by your name and you can call me by mine, things we choose to be called by instead of labels.”

N-29 stared at him for a long time. Alex was beginning to think maybe this was far too good to be true. Maybe he waited too long. They were no longer little boys doing crossword puzzles. Alex was the one literally standing by and walking him to torture. Silly him to think they could be friends. Or, more than friends if his stupid 16 year old thoughts won over. 

“I do not know,” N-29 said, voice tight and controlled, “You do not let me see my mother to know.”

Alex licked his lips, feeling more than a little grim. He didn’t know how to fix that. He was already pushing it by being in here with him, he couldn’t just reunite mother and son. Though he wished he could.

“My mom was taken from me too,” Alex tried, “We lived on the reservation with her when my dad was overseas and when he came home to run this place, he took us from her and I haven’t seen her.” 

It was too much information, he knew it, but he wanted so badly to bond with him. He wanted that smile he gave when they were kids, the little smirk he wore when they were teenagers and did crossword puzzles in a way that felt like flirting, the spark he felt when he touched his shoulder. He didn’t like the coldness that started the minute Alex told him he wasn’t going to see him as much because he had to go to basic training. 

“We were friends when we were little, right? I always thought we were friends,” Alex added when the story of his mother got no reaction.

“Do you mean before you were one of them?” N-29 asked, “Or maybe you were always one of them. Nice men do not work here. I know that much.”

Alex swallowed and tried to think of a good excuse. It was hard when he didn’t disagree with him. Nice men _didn’t_ work here. They were all the worst breed of man Alex had ever met. But, when Alex was faced with a choice, it seemed better to be here and do his best to dilute the negativity the best he could than to run away and pretend he never saw it.

“I’m trying to help. I got them to let you grow your hair out. You said you liked it when we were younger,” Alex tried. N-29 slowly sat down on his cot. Alex wasn’t foolish enough to see it as a sign of comfort.

“Do you think I want hair over my mother?” he asked, “Over family?”

“Do you have other family members here?” Alex asked, genuinely curious. 

He only knew which one was his mother because even now she was hellish to experiment on. Knowing her son was so close kept her fire burning and she fought everyone who took her out. That or when she’d sing with her head pressed against the wall that was closest to his cell before bed, hoping he’d hear it. Alex had fallen asleep to it more than once when he was little.

“They are all family like all the people who hurt them are yours,” N-29 said. Alex furrowed his eyebrows.

“They aren’t all my family,” Alex said.

“They are,” he corrected him, “You follow them, they are your family.”

“I-I don’t _follow_ \--”

“This is all I have known and I know it is wrong, why don’t you?” N-29 all but demanded.

Alex didn’t answer right away, breathing slow and staring at him. For a man who lived in a prison cell his entire life, he was awfully incredible at making eye contact. It was both impossible to keep and impossible to look away.

“Isn’t it better that I’m here and trying to help than ignoring it’s happening?” Alex asked.

“Who are you helping? Not us,” he said. Alex looked around and peeked out of the cell to make sure they were still alone before he gave N-29 his full attention.

“How should I help? I can’t make them let you go, I don’t have that power,” he said. N-29 huffed a laugh.

“Then you ask them to use things they already have instead of hurting us. You ask to allow our abilities to not be suppressed. You ask to let us out for more than just pain,” N-29 listed. They weren’t bad ideas, but Alex would really have to think about how to make them happen. Maybe he could talk to Kyle.

“You know why they do that, right? I’m not saying it’s right, but you understand the point, don’t you? They don’t want you congregating because they know you could hurt them,” Alex explained. N-29 huffed a laugh, shaking his head as he stood up.

Alex watched as he took off his shirt and held his arms out, baring his body as if that was proof of what he wasn’t capable of doing. He was thin, possibly malnourished, and was covered in scars from all the poking and prodding they’d done since he was little. _N-29_ was tattooed on his shoulder, forever branding him with that title. And, maybe most importantly, he had a port implanted into his chest that was where they injected him with suppressants daily. 

“We are weak. Do you see me? What could I do?” N-29 demanded. Alex swallowed harshly again, looking away. “If you think you are my friend, help us. Please.”

“I’ll try,” Alex said. It was all he could say, really. He couldn’t defend himself anymore. No one had ever really laid it out that way. He could lie to himself that he was fixing it from the inside, but he wasn’t really. And that just meant he was just as much of a bad man as they were.

N-29 sighed and put his shirt back on.

“Try, try, try. The last man said he would try and did nothing, just left,” N-29 said. That caught Alex’s attention and he looked back towards him.

“What man?”

“The early one,” he said.

“No, what do you mean?” Alex prodded. N-29 looked frustrated that he didn’t just know.

“The one like your father.”

Alex thought about it, raking his mind through who the hell could’ve possibly offered to help them and just disappeared that also was like his father. And then it clicked.

“Tripp?” he asked. N-29 just stared and Alex took it as a yes. “He tried to help? But he went missing. That doesn’t--Oh.”

“Oh?” N-29 repeated. Alex felt cold and even more nervous than he had when he first walked in here. He again peeked his head out, scared he was going to get caught. He needed to erase any evidence that this was happening.

“He went missing,” Alex said, softer this time, “And if you’re right and he tried to help, then... Then something not good happened. I’ll have to look more into it to make sure, but...”

“I see,” N-29 said, voice soft for the first time. Alex looked back at him and took a very hesitant step closer.

“I’m going to help,” Alex said firmly. N-29 furrowed his eyebrows in confusion.

“Then you will go missing.”

“Sounds like even more reason to help,” Alex said, “If they’re willing to do something like that, then there’s something even worse than I thought going on. So I’m going to figure it out.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re right. No good man just works here and sits by. I would really like to be a good man,” Alex said. He didn’t really look like he believed him. “You have no reason to trust me, I don’t expect you to. But I’m just letting you know. Because I do consider you my friend.”

“Friend,” he echoed. Alex tried to manage a smile despite the fact that his mind was reeling. When he came here tonight, he hadn’t expected to accidentally learn about a possible cover up.

“And, um, it’s not much, but maybe I can ask your mother what your name is?” Alex offered. N-29 swallowed, his jaw clenched as he nodded. “Okay, I have to go now. Before we get caught.”

“Goodbye,” he said. Alex nodded and slowly exited the cell. Closing it back hurt him more than he would admit.

As Alex walked back to the control system and started to quickly wipe the evidence off the drive, his mind stuck on what could’ve happened to Tripp. What did he do to get caught? Did he get caught or did he run? Was he threatened? Did his grandpa have something to do with it? His father?

Alex quickly grabbed his phone and typed out a message to Kyle. He was in medical school, but he was training to come and work at Caulfield. Not out of choice, but because he was told to. So, he texted him in the code they’d created the minute they figured out their dads were probably reading every text they sent.

_Alex: treehouse. 9805._

_Kyle: next week_

By that time tomorrow, he’d be with Kyle at a creek in the woods they found when they were 13. And they were going to start investigating.

And Alex was finally going to actually do something to help.

**Author's Note:**

> also on my tumblr: spaceskam


End file.
